


Conversations In The Dark

by Bobbadopolous



Category: Emmerdale, robron
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 16:24:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9911180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobbadopolous/pseuds/Bobbadopolous
Summary: Aaron has a conversation with Jackson one night while in prison.  No threat to robron just good old-fashioned nostalgia.





	

Aaron lay awake on his bunk in the middle of the night.   
Sleep did not come easily to him when he was separated from Robert.   
Robert had been there every night since their reconciliation, if not in person then on the other end of the phone. He had been there for every one of Aaron’s nightmares. It was like Robert was the guardian that kept his monsters at bay. He stood between Aaron and the things that Aaron feared and on the nights when he couldn’t single-handedly hold them back they stood and fought them together. 

He imagined Robert dressed in the anime armour of the comic book… no sorry graphic novel, heroes he loved so much. Fierce and dangerous looking with a permanent shadow cast across his face… a fantasy Aaron wouldn’t be opposed to trying out at a later date.

Aaron felt the loss of his protector deeply. He worried that the wounds Robert helped heal would reopen in his absence and all that bad blood and insidious infection would spew forth and make him ill again. A sickness of the mind that spread through his consciousness and decayed any good it might find there.

Aaron wasn’t that afraid of the other inmates, he could take a kicking and survive and he could give a kicking just as well. As long as that was as far as it got he was okay. No, the adversary Aaron most feared was the one his fists had no effect on… though he’d certainly given it a go in his youth. Lashing out at the monsters in his head and hitting only innocent flesh in return… first Paddy and then Jackson. Battering and bruising those he loved and leaving his demons unharmed.

Jackson, Aaron thought, memories flooding back of the first time his explosive temper had threatened to send him to prison. Of course Jackson hadn’t known the real reason Aaron couldn’t accept himself… though he sometimes wondered if he’d had his suspicions.   
After all Jackson had been the first man to share his bed and Aaron was sure some of his early actions had spoken of fears beyond simple inexperience. But if Jackson had suspected anything he’d never pushed Aaron for answers being either patient enough to wait for Aaron to talk or too afraid of his reaction to broach the subject. Aaron hoped it was the former.

Thinking of Jackson was always painful but lying there on his bunk in the dark it was somehow less painful than thinking of Robert so he allowed himself to pick at those old scabs that were less likely to bleed him dry.

Jackson had been intoxicating from the very beginning. Not the flamboyant stereotype Aaron had thought all gays to be. He was the kind of bloke Aaron could have a beer with in the evening and wake up with in the morning. He’d had an optimism and joy for life that Aaron hadn’t experienced much in his lifetime and didn’t understand but was drawn to all the same.

“Aw…You’re gonna make me blush.”

Aaron sat bolt upright in his bunk and peered out into the darkness.  
“Jackson?”

“The one and only,” came a voice that was still familiar so many years after it had been silenced.

“It’s been a while,” Aaron commented. It had been years in fact, since his brain had last brought forth this incarnation.

“That’s kind of your choice … since…you know… I’m imaginary and all,” It was a typically ‘Jackson’ thing to say and it flooded Aaron with a sense of great comfort as well as deep grief.

“I still think of you, you know,” Aaron said worried that imaginary Jackson would consider his long absence from Aaron’s subconscious to be a sign of neglect.

“I’m not here to guilt you Aaron,” Jackson reassured him, “It’s a good sign that you don’t need my ugly mug around anymore.”

They lapsed into silence for a moment each carefully considering what to say next.

“Why’d you stop coming?” Aaron asked eventually.

“You stopped wondering what our lives would’ve been like if I’d lived, if there hadn’t been an accident, if you hadn’t hit me that day.”

“I don’t remember stopping,” Aaron admitted, “I mean I don’t remember why.”

“Because you stopped wishing your life was something other than what it was,” Jackson answered simply.

Aaron thought about it and realised that it was true. At some stage and for some reason he had stopped playing the ‘what if’ game and started to enjoy the life he was actually living. And for all the people in his life that made him want to get out of bed in the morning there was really only one person he could credit with the change.

“Robert,” Aaron sighed and his heart broke for all the miles that stood between them.

“Robert,” Jackson echoed, “You never did like the easy life did ya?”

“Easy’s just another word for boring,” Aaron retorted falling back into the easy going banter that he and Jackson had always shared.

“And boring’s just another word for safe,” Jackson deftly replied.

“I’m safe with Robert,” Aaron said with confidence.

“You’re not safe in here though are you?” Genuine worry tarnished Jackson’s usually cheery voice.

“I thought you were here to make me feel better,” Aaron said pouting slightly, “You’re doing a shit job of it.”

“Just saying it straight,” Jackson said not sounding the least bit remorseful, “That’s how you and I operate, remember? You do something stupid and then I tell you you’ve done something stupid. Then you call me a mithering old woman and I call you an impulsive hooligan and then you say sorry and I can’t stay mad at you and…”

“I remember,” Aaron said holding up a hand in the darkness in an attempt to stop the diatribe.

“So… you did something stupid,” Jackson said and there’s a laugh and a challenge wrapped up in it.

“Gee thanks,” Aaron said sarcastically though he couldn’t exactly deny it. Besides it was refreshing to have someone call him on it… even if that someone was the imaginary ghost of an ex-boyfriend.

“I thought you were done with all the fighting nonsense,” Jackson said and once again his stern words were betrayed by a waver of concern.

“I was… I am,” Aaron replied not wanting Jackson to see him as the thug he sometimes feared he was, “It was just… a bad day.”

“Yeah,” Jackson agreed, “I watched the highlights reel. You do realise you’re well fitter than that Rebecca bird don’t you?”

“Thanks,” Aaron said rolling his eyes and trying to pass off the small chuckle that escaped his lips as a manly huff. “It wasn’t really about her though was it?”

“No,” Jackson agreed, “But you know the Aaron I met all those years ago would’ve had a hard time admitting that.”

“So that’s progress then,” Aaron said with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

“I guess that’s another thing we have the Great Robert Sugden to thank for, hey?” and there seemed, to Aaron, to be a hint of real jealousy there.

“So you’re not a fan then?” Aaron asked though he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted the answer.

“Team Ed all the way,” Jackson stated though the humour was back in his voice.

“Ed was a great guy,” Aaron agreed, “but…” then he stalled not sure he wanted to finish the thought.

“But what?”

“But he wasn’t you,” Aaron admitted after a moment, “All the things that attracted me to Ed, the cocky swagger and the big smile … it was all stuff that reminded me of you…”

Jackson had no response to that so the room fell silent.

“Are you still there or has your head inflated to the point it burst?” Aaron asked the darkness, “It was all about you, you muppet, I wasn’t ready to let you go. So I kept wanting him to be you and he kept falling short and it wasn’t fair… can you just say something so I can stop talking...”

There was a beat of silence and then…

“Well I am a hard act to follow,” Jackson admitted.

“Idiot,” Aaron replied but there was no heat in it… then after another heavy silence.   
“I do miss you, you know.”

“I know,” Jackson said, “I’d say the same but it seems a bit narcissistic, doesn’t it? A figment of your imagination saying it misses you.”

“Is that what you are? Just a figment?” 

“Well no…,” Jackson replied, “I like to think I’m a really charming and handsome figment…a cut above the rest.”

“Yeah well given the rest of the ghosts in my head that’s a fairly low bar.”  
Aaron hadn’t meant for the conversation to take such a dark turn but the words had left his lips before he could stop them.

“Stop changing he subject,” Jackson said saving Aaron from any awkwardness, “you were busy telling me how much you missed me and I believe you were just about to list out my most miss-able qualities. You can start with my chiselled features, or my impeccable grooming habits or…”

“Well I don’t miss you running your gob so much,” Aaron said though it was a blatant lie.

Jackson responded with mock-outrage and a simple “Wounded!”   
“You could always tell me what you miss about Robert if you’d prefer.”

“What so you can have another go?” Aaron asked and there was the hint of a warning there.

“I wasn’t having a go,” Jackson insisted.

“Yeah well I don’t want to talk about that anyway,” Aaron said feeling that talking about Robert would be like betraying both men at once.

“OK so no ghosts, no loves, which leaves what… the weather?” Jackson said before launching into another monologue. “It was a grey and drizzly day in the old prison yard, the inmates shivered in the bitter cold. The sun showed itself briefly at approximately one pm before retreating again behind an ominous cloud. One could say that it was a metaphor…”

“OK ok, stop,” Aaron said finally, “I’ll tell you about Robert but you can’t get pissy if it turns out it’s something you don’t want to here.”

“Me? Pissy?” Jackson asked feigning offence.

Aaron shrugged non-apologetically.

“Fine,” Jackson said, “Do you want to do this question and answer style or do you have some kind of Ode to Robert prepared?”

“You can ask questions,” Aaron decided, “but I don’t have to answer them if I don’t want.”

“Fair enough,” Jackson agreed, “What’s his middle name?”

“Really?” Aaron asked unimpressed, “That’s your question?”

“Yeah, I’m starting simple.”

“Jacob.”

“Favourite colour?”

“I don’t know,” Aaron admitted, “but he looks really good in maroon … and blue come to think of it.”

“Sorry I asked,” Jackson responded light heartedly.

“Is this really the best you got?” Aaron queried.

“No, but I don’t think you’re going to want to answer the question I really want to ask.”

“You never know unless you try,” Aaron replied but he was suddenly nervous.

“Why could you tell him and not me?”

Aaron’s breath caught in his throat.

“Forget it,” Jackson said hurriedly, “That’s not a fair question.”

There was silence for a while and it seemed like Aaron was going to take the out Jackson had offered him and not answer.

“It was timing really,” Aaron replied eventually.  
“If Gordon hadn’t come back I probably wouldn’t have told anyone ever.”

“There were things I would’ve done differently if I’d known,” Jackson admitted, “Things I would’ve understood better.”

“Like me punching you in the face you mean?” 

“Yeah just little things like that,” Jackson said chuckling lightly and easing some of the tension.

“Glad you can laugh about it now,” Aaron said sarcastically.

“You’d be amazed at what you can laugh at when you’re both dead and imaginary.”

Aaron huffed in response.

“So just timing then, huh?” Jackson pressed.

“Not just timing, no,” Aaron admitted, “But that was a big part of it. Him showing up forced me to a place where I couldn’t deny it anymore and then I guess Robert got me to a place where I felt I didn’t have to.”

Jackson had fallen silent.

“But it wouldn’t have happened without you,” Aaron admitted.

“How do you mean?”

“I wouldn’t have been able to let Robert in if you hadn’t shown me how.” The earnestness with which Aaron answered quickly gave way to awkwardness.

“Does this mean I get to take all the credit for your personal growth?” Jackson asked to lighten the mood.

“Sure,” Aaron replied, “Do you want the kudos for the part where I decked a guy and ended up in prison too?”

“You know what, I’m going to let you have that one.”

“Thanks for that,” was Aaron’s sarcastic reply.

“Well I feel better now,” Jackson admitted.

“I don’t,” Aaron huffed, “You really are quite shit at distracting me you know?”

“You choose the topic of conversation then,” Jackson said, “Let me guess…cars.”

“Like I’m going to talk cars with a guy who only ever drove a rubbish van?” Aaron scoffed.

“I’ll have you know that that van was a finely-tuned, performance vehicle.”

“Yeah right, whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“Speaking of sleep, tomorrow’s going to be a long day if you don’t get any,” 

“And you wonder why I called you a mithering old woman,” Aaron said but mainly just to avoid the subject of sleep.

“I’m not going to apologise for caring about you,” Jackson said and it was two parts gentle to one part firm.

“I can’t sleep,” Aaron admitted and then to try to fend off Jackson’s sympathetic response, “why else would I be talking to you?”

“Words hurt Aaron,” Jackson said but there was no sting in his voice. He knew Aaron too well to take offense, “Anyway I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that last part and give you your present anyway.”

“Present?” Aaron asked unimpressed.

“Yeah… guaranteed to help you sleep like a bug in a rug,” Jackson replied, “Here boy!”

Aaron was confused for a moment trying to work out why Jackson would refer to him in that way before his thoughts were interrupted by a big shaggy head coming into view.

“Clyde,” Aaron said confused. Though Jackson had come and gone in the past this was the first time Aaron had seen his dog since his untimely death.

Clyde bounded up on to the bunk next to Aaron and curled up beside him tongue lolling happily out the side of his mouth.

“It’s good to see you boy,” Aaron said softly not caring that it wasn’t real or that he was possibly in the middle of a psychotic break. He twisted his hands gently into Clyde’s long fur and breathed in his scent. 

“Thanks,” he called out to Jackson but it seemed he was already gone, perhaps there could only be one at a time.

The dog’s presence was calming and as Aaron curled further around the memory of Clyde he felt the first waves of sleep finally take him.

…

Aaron woke up alone but well rested. He sat up slowly and looked down to where Ethan was perched on the desk.

“Is it just me Aaron mate or does this cell smell like dog?”


End file.
